Fri 9/22 @ 7:30PM
The Emerson String Quartet has a long and storied history. It was founded as a student ensemble at the Juilliard School in New York in 1976 and named after the poet Ralph Waldo Emerson.
It began touring professionally that same year and was soon winning acclaim around the world. It’s released three dozen albums, toured internationally, won nine Grammys, commissioned new works while performing the classics, and mentored younger musicians. And two of its founding members — violinists Eugene Drucker and Philip Seltzer (a Cleveland native whose parents were both violinists with the Cleveland Orchestra) — are still with the group. (It’s rounded out by cellist Paul Watkins and violist Lawrence Dutton).
Two years ago, the quartet announced that it was disbanding to focus on teaching and individual projects. It’s currently on its farewell tour, which brings it to Oberlin College’s Finney Chapel this weekend as part of its Artist Recital Series. Its program balances the old and new, with Felix Mendelssohn’s String Quartet No. 2 in A Minor, Op. 13; 49-year-old American composer Sarah Kirkland Snider’s “Drink the Wild Ayre,” the last piece commissioned by the quartet; and Ludwig van Beethoven’s six-movement String Quartet No. 13 in B-flat Major, Op. 130. The ensemble also performed the Beethoven work in their first Oberlin appearance in 1985.
To get tickets go to oberlin.edu/emersonstringquartet or call 800-371-0178.